Band Of Brothers – *(*)

It took me three times to finish this critically acclaimed and popular tv series about the Easy Company, from the preparation for D-day to the end of the Second World War. I never got past the first five episodes in previous attempts (upon its dvd release in 2002 and when I first took a group of tourists to the Normandy Beaches in 2008). It’s a drag, however historically important it may be.

But since I’m at Omaha Beach almost every week this year and since almost half of the men joining me in that excursion think Band Of Brothers is the best thing they have ever seen on tv, I persevered. And sorry folks, but it’s still a drag.

I’d rather read a book or two about the easy company or listen to audio interviews with its officers, but spare me from watching this series again. The acting is so incredibly bad, the dialogue is embarrassingly ridiculous, there is too much focus on battle and action scenes and almost none on character development, there’s almost no-one to sympathize with and it’s very biased… If I was a family member of one of the war heroes, I’d sue the production team for making them look so superficial.

That said, it IS historically important and will definitely be watched for dozens of years to come. There are ten episodes and each one of them focuses on an important event during the liberation of Europe by the allied forces.

However, it’s all so bland. The stories are perfect to make an audience feel uncomfortable and involved. But that’s not what the producers wanted. They tried too hard to find the right balance between glorifying the heroes and showing their flaws. The main character, Major Winters is an incredibly boring character. He comes out of the war almost unscathed and gets promoted all the time, but somehow you can’t relate to the man at all. He remains a mystery. Maybe it has to do with the actor interpreting him: Damian Lewis, the most boring actor in tv land. This was made before Homeland made him a star, but whether he’s Nicholas Brody or Richard Winters, there’s absolutely no emotion visible on his face. However, it’s not just the acting. There’s hardly any time to sympathize with the heroes as they all die within 30 minutes of their introduction. So when someone new is introduced by episode seven you really stop caring, because he’ll be dead by episode eight. And you still haven’t sympathized with the ones who’ve been around since episode one.

Yeah. I’m probably the only person in the world who didn’t like this tv show and who got annoyed so often by the unconvincing acting, but that’s because the expectations are so damn high. You want this series to be top-notch.